After Sadler Dining Center closed each night, cook Rod Wallenbeck saw too many leftovers being tossed out. So in November of 2013, he decided to repurpose some of them in a new way. Instead of dumping perfectly good ketchup, molasses and other sauces, Wallenbeck mixed them all together and created Rodfather’s Premium BBQ Sauce.

While still working at Sadler, Wallenbeck finished his degree at SU, which helped him to turn his sauce into a business. Today, Rodfather’s is sold in small businesses throughout Syracuse and in the Syracuse University Bookstore.

Rodfather’s didn’t just get its start in the Sadler kitchen; it made its debut served with chicken wings in the dining hall and was an instant hit with students, he said.

But Wallenbeck wasn’t settling for dining hall success. He spent that winter break perfecting his sauce.

“I took the same kind of stuff, the same recipe I’d been making, then I said I’m going to elevate it some more,” Wallenbeck said. “I took whiskey — they didn’t have that at SU — and really took it to a whole new level.”

Besides being created at SU, Wallenbeck credits Syracuse for helping him turn Rodfather’s from a dining hall dish to his own small business. Wallenbeck is a graduate of the now-discontinued hospitality and food service management program at the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics. A big part of that program was a class in which students design a retail or hospitality product and try to sell the idea or the product itself to the Small Business Administration.

Even though Wallenbeck already worked on his barbecue sauce for months, he didn’t develop an actual recipe, said Joe Adamo, an adjunct professor who taught Wallenbeck’s class. So Adamo set that as Wallenbeck’s first step on the road to the perfect barbecue sauce.

It took a few more rough drafts, but Wallenbeck eventually turned out a sauce that both Adamo and his picky 2-year-old daughter loved.

Adamo then reached out to the Small Business Administration to give Wallenbeck more advice. Wallenbeck said he knew his sauce was good, but he didn’t realize the Small Business Administration would love it as much as it did and offered to help him make connections with local businesses.

Wallenbeck designed his own logo, started working with a bottling company in Cazenovia and asked dozens of local shops in and around Syracuse to sell his product. After sampling the sauce, none of them turned him away.

It’s not just tailored to the ribs and pork crowd. Wallenbeck suggests using his versatile sauce on chili, burgers, baked beans and even fish, aiming to cover all regions of barbecue in one bottle.

Rodfather’s sauce can even be found in Wallenbeck’s “pride and joy”: the bookstore in Schine Student Center. As a proud SU alumnus and current employee, Wallenbeck is proud to see his creation on the shelves.

“I owe it to SU to be here. If it wasn’t for my job here, I couldn’t have gotten this started,” Wallenbeck said. “I told myself even if I make 10 million, I’m not leaving.”

Wallenbeck showed his thanks to Adamo and his class by sending him a 12-pack of Rodfather’s sauce last year.

But Adamo credits a lot of Rodfather’s success to Wallenbeck’s personality.

Wallenbeck even had to finish his SU degree independently after the hospitality program was discontinued. But he stuck it out and graduated this past May.

This success isn’t stopping him from taking Rodfather’s even further while still staying local. Wallenbeck is talking to big chain stores like Tops and Wegmans to get his sauce on their Syracuse shelves. Adamo also sees Rodfather’s expanding into e-commerce, which was a big part of the plan he and Wallenbeck developed.

However, one of Wallenbeck’s biggest goals for Rodfather’s sauce reflects its roots.

“I’d like to put it in all the dining halls, including the Dome,” he said. “It was born here and I want it to stay here.”

Published on December 1, 2015 at 9:23 pm

Contact Kathryn: kjkrawcz@syr.edu | @kathrynkrawczyk